


I Won't Burn For You

by lcvellans



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lavellan Backstory, Post-Canon, Post-Trespasser, Sad, Solas Angst, idk how to tag, idk whatever pls just read i need someone to feel my pain, mentions of lavellan/dorian being best friends but idk i didn't talk abt it that much, sad as fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:59:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6246388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lcvellans/pseuds/lcvellans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Vhenan—”<br/>She shook her head and scoffed again, taking a step back from him as he took a step towards her. She didn’t want to hear it, not really. Maybe a part of her did, want to hear about how he loved her, how he missed her, how he was sorry but he had to go through with this, but a majority of her was screaming, no. Run while you can. Save yourself.<br/>“Don’t call me that,” she spat at him. “Don’t you dare call me vhenan when I’m not convinced you ever had a heart in the first place."</p><p>aka, Emry and Solas are reunited, and neither of them are happy about anything, as to be expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Won't Burn For You

She hasn’t seen him for two years. She’s starting to think that’s their special number. Two years between the day he left the first time, and two years since he left her the last. It’s been four years since the last time she’d seen him and felt like she knew him, like he was her other half; like he was her soulmate. Four years ago felt like a lifetime ago now.

Now, she looked at him like he was a stranger.

“You look well.”

She scoffed. She was anything but.

“You let your hair grow out.”

She had. Her once shoulder length hair had grown down her back. Her hair had always grown fast. She kept the side shaved, though. She liked that. So did he, she remembered.

“It suits you.”

“Why are you here?”

She’d always hated small talk. It was a pointless endeavor to evade the obvious. Emry had always been blunt by nature, and she couldn't stand beating around the bush. She could handle a certain amount of it with stuck up nobles, but not with him.

“I think you know why.”

She did. Or at least, she thought she knew why. They’d suspected he’d be in Tevinter, what, with the abundance of elven slaves. That suspicion was confirmed when one of Dorian’s informants had sighted the elven apostate on the outskirts of Tevinter. In turn, the mage had informed Emry. She knew he did it more out of duty to her, than duty to the inquisition. Not that Dorian hadn’t always been loyal to the inquisition, but Emry knew that informing the dreaded inquisition of something of this magnitude could hurt him. Especially considering his seat in the magisterium was already threatened every other week.

Emry knew he did it for her. He was the only one who knew just how much Solas had hurt her when he left. Even worse so when he’d unveiled his plan to her before kissing her and disappearing into the elluvian, ignoring her desperate screams for him to stay.

Emry wouldn't admit to Solas how many nights she stayed awake screaming and crying over him, drowning herself in bottle after bottle. Dorian helped, he was her best friend after all. He didn't baby her, but he still gave her a shoulder to cry on. She needed that, and she respected him for it. Emry would have probably found herself self-destructing as she usually did without Dorian.

She was good at self-destruction.

“But why are you  _here,_ Solas?” she asked, defensive as usual. Her arms were crossed against her chest, the prosthetic arm she’d had fitted soon after she’d lost her arm to the mark hugging close to her. With the help of magic, the arm had feeling in it, but it wasn’t the same. Maybe if she’d lost an arm in a bear attack, or to an angry red Templar, she would’ve coped better afterwards, but knowing that the loss was inevitably linked to her first and only real love, scarred her in more ways than she could list.

“Vhenan—”

She shook her head and scoffed again, taking a step back from him as he took a step towards her. She didn’t want to hear it, not really. Maybe a part of her did want to hear about how he loved her, how he missed her, how he was sorry but he had to go through with this, but a majority of her was screaming  _no. Run while you can. Save yourself._

“Don’t call me that,” she spat at him. “Don’t you dare call me  _vhenan_ when I’m not convinced you ever had a heart in the first place."

“You know that isn’t true.” He sounded sorrowful. Like the weight of the world was on his chest. But wasn't it always?

Emry knew she was hurting him.  _Good,_ a part of her yelled. She was vindictive, she wanted revenge. She hated him for hurting her the way he did. She wanted him to burn.

Another part of her still loved him. That part wanted him to be happy, and to stop looking at her with eyes filled with grief and sorrow. Eyes she once fell in love with.

“Do I? Because someone that loved me wouldn’t have broken my heart, not like you did. You have no idea how much shit you’ve put me through, Solas.”

“Emry,” and there it was, her name. The same name he used to whisper into her ear late at night in her quarters, causing her to moan, or giggle, or smile.

She couldn’t think about those memories without wanting to cry. She couldn’t think about the way he'd pick her up and twirl her around, kissing her on the nose when setting her down on his desk; the way he played with her hair like it was second nature to him; the way he smiled at her as she sketched him; the way they'd fuck against the wall; the way he’d draw out sex for as long as possible, finding her ticklish spots and making her laugh until she could wiggle away from him and pin him under her, both laughing like she’d never laughed before.

They used to be happy. He used to make her happy; now, she was left with regret and anger for every memory they’d ever shared. She hated that memories of him still gave her a twinge of hope and happiness that one day they might be happy together. She wanted to hate him. She hated herself for not hating him.

Anger and hate weren't anything new, though. She’d been filled with anger ever since she was young, moving from place to place with the Dalish. Ever since she and Larania, her girlfriend at the time, had tried to leave the Dalish and a Templar had tried to take her in as an apostate. It left her with a nasty scar across her lip, and Larania dead. She never thought the tales of mage hatred outside Dalish camps were real; just scary stories the keeper would tell them whenever they talked too much of wanting to leave.

That didn’t stop her from wanting to leave. When she was sent to the Temple of Sacred Ashes, she thought it would be a perfect time to leave; to be on her own. She thought that since she was older, twenty-one instead of the idealistic fourteen year old she was at the time she first tried to leave the Dalish, things would be easier. By the time she was twenty-one, she’d been acclimated to how cruel the world really was.

She’d remained cruel and cynical towards the world until she met Solas, who somehow brought out the best in her; showed her that not everything was evil and terrible.

Four years later, Emry realized her original view on the world was correct.

 _“Don’t,”_ she cut him off, shaking her head again. She felt tears in her eyes but she refused to let them fall. She refused to cry around him. She saved that for when she was alone in her quarters, or in some tavern, drinking herself into a tearful stupor. “You wouldn’t have done this to me if you loved me!” she yelled. She had no issue getting angry with him; she’d been angry for the past four years.

Her whole life, maybe.

“I loved you, Solas. I  _trusted_ you… you were the only one I’d ever,” her voice wavered, she knew she was close to crying, but she wouldn’t let herself actually let the tears fall. “You were the only person I’d ever really loved. And you fucking knew it.”

She saw the pain in his eyes, anger too, but mostly pain. She knew she was hurting him. Dorian once told her that her words stung worse than her magic. He meant it as a joke, but there was truth to it. Emry always knew exactly what to say to hurt the people she loved. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, maybe she was just a bitch. She didn't quite know. She could feel a shield around her though, one she'd had around herself for years that she rarely let down. She was afraid to let it down, or else someone might see that behind the dreaded inquisitor whose words burnt like the fire she produced from her hands, that she was just a scared little girl, alone, scared, and heartbroken; afraid that she'll spend the rest of her life with this gnawing anger and resentment towards the world.

“You know I never intended to harm you. But this, what I'm doing, it's–”

“Don't try and justify your actions to me,” she cut him off. “Tearing apart this world to bring back an old one isn’t the answer, and you know it. You’re so convinced that this is the only way to fix your fucking mistake that you refuse to listen to reason. But I won't let this world burn for you. _I_  won’t burn for you, Solas.”

“You don't understand!” he yelled, catching her a bit off guard. She could count on one hand the amount of times he’d raised his voice at her. “I have to save my people. They come first, and I have to–”

“ _Don’t,”_  Emry screamed, feeling her body physically rise in temperature. She was known to set things on fire when she was angry, but she was too heartbroken to care. Her world was crashing down once again and she felt like she was helpless to stop it. “To restore your world you have to destroy this one. You have to kill everyone in this world, Solas. Does that include me? Don't claim to have ever loved me if this was your plan all along. You  _used_ me, and you fucking know it.”

She felt her blood boiling as she screamed at him. She hadn't realized she gotten closer to him as she yelled, she was so angry she wanted to hurt him. Hurt him like he’d hurt her, to make up for all the nights she’d cried herself to sleep trying to move on and forget him.

“Never once did I use you, and you know better than to insinuate that I never loved you. We both know that isn’t true.”

She could tell he was angry now, too. She had his mannerisms memorized, and by the way his fists were clenched at his side and his face was twisted into a grimace, she could tell just how angry he was at her. She didn’t care. She didn’t deserve to be the only one who was angry.

“If you really loved me you wouldn’t have left me,” she yelled, pushing him backwards in anger like she had when he ended things right after taking away her vallaslin. “You wouldn't have taken my vallaslin away from me and left me with nothing else," another push. "If you ever loved me, you wouldn’t be doing this to me. You’d have stayed,” she pushed him again. “You wouldn’t have caused me four years of heartbreak. You wouldn’t haunt my dreams and make me wish I’d never met you,” she kept pushing him as she yelled. He didn’t stop her. Despite everything, Emry knew Solas knew her better than she did herself. She knew he knew there was no stopping her rage, and that underneath all her anger was years and years of pain that she was unable to deal with.

He took hold of her arms after a moment, stopping her from continuing to hit his chest. She was so angry at him, she wanted to shake free and slap him across the face for touching her, but another part of her wanted to cave into his arms and stay there forever.

She settled for pulling out from his arms and pushing him against the wall behind them and kissing him, hard and angry. She didn’t know what she was thinking, only that she was _broken_ and that she still missed him with her whole body. He said nothing, only kissed her back, moving his hands to card through her hair as she pretended they were still back in her quarters at Skyhold.

It didn’t work.

After a moment, Solas moved his arms around her body to pick her up and turn them so she was against the wall instead of him. She clutched at his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his waist, still feverishly kissing him. She still wasn’t sure if she wanted this to be real. She didn’t want to stop, though. As much as she knew she’d hate herself for letting this happen, she convinced herself that she needed it.

She gripped tightly at his shoulders, squeezing so tight that even through his clothing she thought she may leave bruises. “Fuck,” she groaned, pulling away from his lips for a mere second. “Just do it already.”

“Are you sure--”

“Just fuck me,” she snapped, her breath heavy. “I don’t want to talk anymore just  _fuck me,_ Solas.”

He crashed his lips back against hers. She felt lightheaded; she remembered their first kiss, as she dreamt. It felt so real, but then again, so did everything good in their relationship. She should have known right then that it was foreshadowing that the rest of their relationship would be as seemingly fake as the kiss in the fade was.

She felt him pulling his pants down, and lifting up her skirt and pulling down her underclothes. She wasn’t wearing armor, though Dorian had suggested it. She refused to think of any situation or confrontation with Solas where she’d require armor because of him.

Her eyes were shut, her face buried in the crook of his neck. He smelt the same, of peppermint and the tea he hated. He only drank it when he didn’t want to sleep, something must’ve been keeping him away from his dreams and the fade. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what.

She kept her eyes closed as he slid inside her, she gasped gently and gripped tighter to his shoulders. It was familiar, unlike the casual flings she’d had over the past four years, using sex as a way to try to forget, as so was her nature. She'd tried to move on before in the past two years, even going as far as to dating Cullen for a short time. She couldn't move on, though. Solas was forever ingrained into her heart, and she was afraid he'd be there forever. 

She moved her hips to meet his, pulling him deeper inside her. He thrusted in and out of her while she held onto him, hiding her face from him, refusing to look him in the eye. Her body was on fire, but it wasn’t from anger this time. She moaned his name, pretending like this was normal, and that nothing was wrong.

Or, she tried. She tried to pretend like him fucking her against a wall in the middle of nowhere was normal, but she couldn’t. She was too emotional, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to stop.

She felt hot tears streaming down her face as he fucked her; she clutched onto him tighter and buried her face deeper into the crook of his neck, trying her best to hide the tears falling from her blue eyes. Emry hated that being with him like this once more made her feel whole again, just for a moment, before it made her feel like everything was falling down upon her. 

For a moment though, she let herself feel him again; feel him inside her, touching her,  _holding her._ She let herself have that moment.

It didn’t last long, though. She felt her body coil and shake in pleasure not long before he came inside her. She let him hold her there for a moment afterwards, still soaking in her moment of pretending that everything would be okay.

“Let me down,” she whispered after her moment was over. He did as she asked, and she let go of him and turned away from him. She didn’t want to look him in the eye.

“Emry--”

“Don’t,” she muttered, shaking her head. She was immediately filled with regret. “Just go.”

“Ir abelas, vhenan,” his hand gently touched shoulder, resting there in an attempt of comfort. She couldn’t help but moving her hand up to let their fingers interlock on her shoulder for a moment. “Ar lath ma, always remember that.”

She didn't respond. She wanted to, though. She wanted to tell him she still loved him, even though parts of her hated him. She wanted to tell him to stay, wanted him to abandon this plan of his to destroy her world and to come home with her. She wanted to tell him that she’d take him back in an instant, because she'd never love anyone as much as she loved him.

She didn't. She let go of his hand and said nothing, sniffling gently. She knew he could tell she was crying, but she didn't care. She didn't turn around to watch him walk away this time; watching him leave her once more would be one more thing she wouldn’t be able to take.

She stood in the same place for what feels like hours, though it must’ve only been a few minutes. She slid down against the wall behind her and wrapped her arms around her legs, resting her head on her knees. 

She was heartbroken, but then again, that was nothing new.


End file.
